This invention relates generally to sheet feeding mechanisms, and more particularly to sheet feeding mechanisms that extract sheets from the bottom of a stack.
There are many existing types of document reading machines, such as those of the Xerox process and various character recognition systems. For each of these types of devices, it is necessary to accurately position one document at a time for optical reading of the information thereon. For automatic handling of documents, existing mechanisms employ three stations, the first station where the documents are placed face up in a stack, a second station to which the documents are moved one at a time to be optically viewed, and thirdly a station where the optically read documents are collected and stacked. Existing document feeders for this and additional applications are bulky and complicated.
Therefore, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a document feeder for use with an optical reading device that is simple in operation, compact and reliable.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an improved technique and apparatus for moving sheet material generally.